This invention relates to coin telephone station apparatus and centralized common control equipment for automatically determining without operator assistance the actual number and types of coins deposited during initial and overtime periods of local and toll calls. The invention particularly relates to automatic facilities and call processing techniques which prevent customers from unwarrantedly obtaining free telephone service by simulating coin deposits.
Telephone company improvement programs in the last decade have resulted in a multitude of coin service innovations which better serve customer needs and reduce operating costs. Illustratively, the programs have modified coin service from prepay to dial-tone-first operation and have provided free coin service for special numbers, such as the "911" emergency code. In addition, single slot paystations have been introduced for flexibility in deposits, improved transmission, and reductions in vandalism and theft. Such a single slot phone uses a solid state totalizer circuit which counts the coin deposits and outpulses respective tone pulses for each type of coin for facilitating more automatic coin call processing. Significantly, the introduction of TSPS (Trafffic Service Position System) and its integrated ACTS (Automatic Coin Telephone System) substantially aid the more efficient and less costly serving of coin calls with significantly reduced operator assistance.
Despite the improvements achieved through the foregoing programs and the widespread use of TSPS, telephone companies heretofore have not adequately solved the problems of fraud on coin calls and the inefficient and costly procedures for scheduling and collecting paystation coin boxes. Occasionally, the companies are subjected to fraud due to customer simulations of coin deposits by false ground start signaling and by counterfeit tones from so-called "red-box" devices. The scheduling procedure has proven deficient because the telcos have inadequate information as to the coin box fill. High cost and inefficiency arise in collection arrangements because telcos utilize many precautionary measures to safeguard against theft following the removal of the coin box from the paystation by telco employees. The precautions are taken because the companies have insufficient accumulated data concerning the total amount of money in a collected box.
In view of the foregoing, it is apparent that a need exists for facilities and procedures which prevent coin call fraud and provide adequate data on coin deposits for enabling telcos efficiently to schedule and collect coin boxes at reasonable cost and without the necessity for burdensome integrity check precautions in the collection operations.
It is an object of my invention to reduce the need for operator assistance on coin calls and particularly to provide automatic facilities for deriving precise data on the numbers and types of coins deposited in paystations during each call and accumulating coin box fill data over a multiplicity of calls in order to improve coin box collection scheduling and guarding against coin theft.
Another object is to improve coin box collection procedures and specifically to reduce the necessity for special checking activities heretofore used for guarding against coin theft during such collections.
It is an object of my invention to provide improvements for preventing fraudulent calls from coin stations and particularly for detecting calling party attempts to obtain free telephone service by simulating coin deposit signals.
A specific object is to furnish facilities for detecting and preventing fraud calls that use "red-box" devices to simulate coin deposit tones particularly on toll calls.